CURATORS’ NOTES (Summer 2020)

Hello, and welcome to our first show at Sharp Hands Gallery!

We (your humble curators, Cheryl and Kevin) first met at Kolaj Fest in New Orleans in the summer of 2018. Sharing our love of collage art as well as a geographical region (the Pacific Northwest, USA), we have developed a friendship as well as a mutual goal to promote exciting artists in the (often overlooked) world of collage. When the Coronavirus pandemic began spreading earlier this year, people around the world were faced with quarantine, meaning many months of fear, hardships, and loneliness. As a creative escape, the idea of Sharp Hands began to percolate during these strange days. 

One of the things we both miss most is engaging with art in person—alongside other artists, at galleries, or in event spaces. We miss the collage community. So we decided to start a new online home for our favorite collage art. But we wanted to present it like a show, hence the name Sharp Hands Gallery. We’re planning on releasing a collection four times a year, and we’re also thinking of ways to bring you up close to the artists in new ways—such as live talks on Zoom, demo videos, Instagram stories, Q&As, and more. Each show will feature six artists debuting six new works—and yes, they’re available to purchase. 

Because the collage world is so vast and vibrant, we had an extensive range of people we wanted to work with. In this first show, our selections span the globe, with artists from the UK, Indonesia, Norway, Australia, and Scotland. We have Steve (Wolves of Suburbia) Reynold’s nostalgically melodic music collages. Feransis and his marvelous topsy-turvy reimagining of Batman. Miss.Printed’s collages find themselves literally in the outside world. Mark Watkins remembers life with human touch. Mel Linaham blends shards of texture with beauty in her work. And Rhed Fawell combats 2020 isolation with collages that display a timeless wonder. It’s endlessly fascinating to us how these artists breathe new life into disregarded materials. We are reminded that no matter where someone lives or what languages they speak, collage art is a universal language and an exploration on how to see things in a new way.

Thank you and enjoy,

Cheryl Chudyk & Kevin Sampsell, curators

Summer 2020